Wednesday, April 09, 2014

"I think I see your problem..."

So I took the Mauser .25 apart and laid the pieces out on a paper towel for an Arms Room post this morning...

See the recoil spring guide rod? Note how it's flanged on one end to hold the spring? Well, it will go in the gun when oriented like you see it in this picture, but the gun won't go back together because you've got it backwards, there, Einstein.

D'oh!

(This is one downside to accumulating old pistols; I've had this one gathering dust in the back of the safe for yoinks, and its 7.65 big brother even longer, but I haven't had one apart in... well, a while. You forget little details in that time period.) .

8 comments:

I got my stuff back from the maximum-IQ-strictly-enforced crowd recently and the SigPro 2340 wouldn't cycle.

The numnuts had taken it apart (why?) and put it back together with the slide lock inserted ever so slightly wrong. One shot: slide locks back. Unlock slide, one shot: slide locks back. etc.

Took me a while to figure out, because while disassembling it I saw how the lock was inserted and somehow mentally snapped onto that as "correct" (even though it was the CAUSE of the problem) and it took me a while to kick my brain out of the rut.

Glad you got your stuff back. It sounds like someone was messing around with it while it was in storage. You might want to check everything over pretty thoroughly. No telling what other damage they may have done.

I made that same mistake when cleaning an Iver Johnson TP-22 and was later rewarded with frequent ammunition jams. I was PO'd with pistol and found out only later the idiot shooting it (moi) was responsible. I hang my head in shame.

I once disassembled a 1950's Colt Model 1903, found it had been fired maybe once or one full mag at most, and tried to put it back together.

The tolerances on fitting the barrel into the slide, an easy and sloppy half turn or so on my own well-used 1920s versions, were so tight I thought for the first half dozen tries I was doing it wrong.

Finally aligning the barrel to the slide to the correct few thousandths of an inch, when it went together the barrel/slide/ frame felt like a single piece of metal.

I finally understood more about Tam's posts on used firearms being priced not only by rarity & demand but also by fit & finish. I'd never experienced such fit on a gun before, even new revolvers and semiautos I owned.

I still regret not buying that gun, it was gone the next time I visited the pawn shop with more knowledge and money to buy it.